BOE 4.0 and Crystal Reports 2013 compatibility

[Former Member]

Hi,

My asp.net app system is running with crystal report 14.0.x assembly. Reports documents are hosted by BOE 4.0 server which being access by my asp.net app, everything works fine.

All my crystal reports documents file (.rpt file) was created using Crystal Reports designer bundled with Visual Studio 2010 few years back.

My plan is:

To upgrade to Visual Studio 2013 and buy Crystal Reports 2013 to upgrade my designer as well as upgrading my old crystal report documents. Publish the upgraded documents into BOE 4.0 server.

Concerns:

- Will it be compatible to publish report documents created from Crystal reports 2013 into BOE 4.0 server?

- What other compatibility issues that may arise for this plan?

- If there is, where can I get the runtime assembly for crystal reports 2013?

- Is there other procedure do I have to consider to achieve the plan?

Thank you,

erwin

[former_member188030 · Accepted solution]

Hi Erwin,

Here are your answers.

- Will it be compatible to publish report documents created from Crystal reports 2013 into BOE 4.0 server?

--- CR 2013 designer is a newer version of CR and is introduced with BI 4.1. However, from the CR functionality stand point it is no different that BI 4.0's CR 2011. So you could try and publish reports to BI 4.0 and refresh them in launchpad. See if everything works fine.

- What other compatibility issues that may arise for this plan?

--- From .NET SDK point of view, no compatibility issues as your assembly references (SDK) stay the same.

- If there is, where can I get the runtime assembly for crystal reports 2013?

--- There is no SDK (Runtimems) for  CR 2013. Also, as your reports are hosted on Bi 4.0, you dont need CR specific SDK but the BI SDK. (14.0).

- Is there other procedure do I have to consider to achieve the plan?

--- I would ask Why you are upgrading to CR 2013 when youare not upgrading to BI 4.1? Ideally CR 2011 as well as CR 2013 have almost same features and there is not .NET SDK for both. So you are not getting anything new by upgrading only CR. Because ultimately, your .NET SDK stays the same (BI 4.0 version 14.0 assemblies).

Thanks,

Bhushan

[DellSC · Accepted solution]

The one thing you get by upgrading to a full version of Crystal is the ability to publish your reports to BO from within Crystal.  This means you can overwrite existing reports and keep the existing instances, which you can't do through any other means of publishing reports.

-Dell

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Bhushan,

Thanks for the reply,

I am considering your suggestion and give it a try.

Thanks

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Dell,

Its good to know that full version of CR can now publish (into BO server) the report document directly.

Thanks for the info.